My reaction to Jackson’s death is, hey, put on your party hat, because I don’t ever think it’s bad news when a pedophile bites the dust, especially one whom I believe was a child molester. I don’t care if he was sad or confused. Fuck that. The media trots out that bullshit line every some Holllywood trainwreck dies before his or her time, and people can’t wait to echo it. I don’t care if his mommy and daddy were mean to him—plenty of people are fucked up by their parents, plenty suffer abuse and grow up cursed with self-hatred and work their way out of it and don’t end up as pathetic deviants and drug addicts surrounded by a coterie of users.

I don’t put any credence in the idea that our consensual adulation helped doom this beautiful young mutant, at least no more so than it ruins the average run of spoiled, self-involved asshole rock stars. Jackson stands out for me in that his death trip was the most grotesque and the most reeking-of-corruption of any to which I’ve been witness. He was a pharaoh-like figure, flaunting his eerie perversity behind a screen of wealth and the trappings of his estate…yet without the bucks, he would have been just another chicken hawk. He succeeded in avoiding accountability for his sins in life by paying out tens of millions of dollars, but he certainly should be held accountable in death. Iconic? Sure, but an icon of dissolution and decay, his life a weird riff on Dorian Gray that carried a taint of putrefaction. His legacy to pop culture? He invented the moonwalk and helped to popularize the music video? Stop it! I mean, seriously.

Me?

I thought his life was somewhat tragic, but then I enjoyed the spectacle that it became. Other than that, I'm not particularly moved to state or write anything about it other than he probably did fuck those kids.